News

Moderna Inc has asked for a meeting with the US Food and Drug Administration to query the agency’s decision to refuse to review its candidate mRNA vaccine for influenza. Effective 16 February, the agency hadn’t disclosed whether or not it would consider a follow-up discussion known as a Type-A meeting. This follows an event in early February when the director of the FDA’s biologics evaluation and research division at the agency, Vinayak Prasad, issued a refusal-to-file letter to Moderna overruling the advice of career staff at the agency.

AstraZeneca Plc is looking to expand its presence in emerging markets outside China as the size and diversity of its portfolio offer new opportunities for the years ahead. This was one of the messages delivered to journalists by Pascal Soriot, the chief executive, on 10 February following the publication of the company’s 2025 results. After a year of product launches and higher demand for key medicines, the company delivered revenue of $58.7 billion in 2025, up by 9% in actual exchange rates and by 8% at constant rates.

The Board of Directors of Sanofi SA has decided not to renew Paul Hudson’s mandate as chief executive after six years of leadership and to appoint Belén Garijo to the role effective 29 April. This is the date of the company’s annual general meeting. Dr Garijo was an executive at Sanofi for 15 years before moving to Merck KGaA in 2011 as chief operating officer and then progressing to the position of CEO in 2021. At the Sanofi AGM, she will be nominated as a group director in addition to her upcoming role as CEO.

Britain’s decision to quit the European Union in 2016 upended many formal commercial links. But it didn’t stop scientists on both sides of the English Channel from meeting on a regular basis to map out collaborations. On 9 February, a group of scientists involved in translational research met in Ghent, Belgium to discuss opportunities for partnerships in immunology and immunotherapy. The meeting was organised by the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIP), Biovia, a health cluster in Flanders, and the UK membership group One Nucleus.

Net sales at Novartis took a hit in the fourth quarter of 2025 as generic versions of some of its iconic drugs faced competition from new producers. Group sales for the period were $13.3 billion, down by 1% at constant exchange rates and up by just 1% as measured in dollars. For the year as a whole, the company reported sales of $54.5 billion, up by 8% in constant and actual exchange rates.

Novartis started construction on 6 February of a new biomedical research centre in San Diego, US, which is one of three global hubs for the company’s drug discovery activities. The other two hubs are in Cambridge, US, and Basel, Switzerland. The move is part of a previously announced $23 billion investment in the US that will also include a new manufacturing site in North Carolina and a site in California to produce radioligand therapies.

Sanofi SA ended 2025 with sales of €43.6 billion and net income of €7.8 billion as it continued to reap the benefits of Dupixent, its anti-inflammatory drug developed with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and first approved in 2017. Dupixent generated sales of €15.7 billion, or 36% of group sales, as it continued to experience strong demand from patients with asthma and other chronic diseases. The annual results were announced on 29 January.

The Roche Group delivered revenue of CHF 61.5 billion ($79.2 billion) in 2025 – an increase of 2% in Swiss francs and 7% at constant exchange rates and driven by five products covering a diverse group of diseases. The revenue was sufficiently large to offset the company’s loss of income in the US from six legacy products, including Herceptin, the world’s first targeted therapy for cancer.

BC Platforms AG of Switzerland has struck another collaboration with an institution that collects anonymised data from patients, significantly expanding its repertoire of information that can be used in medical research. The collaboration is with OmicsBank, a US-based company with access to patient data from emerging markets. Specifically, the partnership will give BC Platforms rights to data from India and the United Arab Emirates, countries which have been under-represented in global pharmaceutical research. The financial terms of the collaboration were not disclosed. 

Within weeks of becoming chief executive of GSK Plc, Luke Miels took responsibility for a $2.2 billion deal to acquire RAPT Therapeutics, a US company with a late stage product for food allergies. The acquisition will give GSK a monoclonal antibody that is being developed as a prophylactic with a dosing schedule that it says is potentially more attractive than a product marketed by Roche.